1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to a head comb for use in a hard disk drive.
2. Description of the Related Art
Actuator dynamics play an important role in a hard disk drive. The hard disk drive has multiple magnetic disks that are vertically stacked within the hard drive. The magnetic disks are read by/written to by magnetic heads that are each coupled to a slider. The sliders are coupled to actuator arms that extend from a head comb. The head comb design affects the actuator dynamics. The head comb pivots within the hard drive on a pivot bearing, which is coupled to both a baseplate and a coverplate for the hard disk drive. A bore through the head comb couples the head comb to the pivot bearing. Typically, the bore through the head comb has a symmetric design in the z-direction and is aligned with the pivot bearing. However, the symmetric bore design results in poor dynamics for the magnetic heads that are adjacent the coverplate due to the vibrations that occur during operation of the hard drive.
The root cause of the poor dynamics for the upper heads is found to be related to the stiffness difference between the coverplate and the baseplate engagement with the pivot bearing. The typical solution is to stiffen the coverplate or make the baseplate weaker. However, there is limited room to stiffen the coverplate, which is achieved by thickening the coverplate. Additionally, weakening the baseplate is not a good option because weakening the baseplate negatively impacts the whole drive level structure by making the structure weaker and thus degrading shock performance.